Owen Meredith was the pen-name of Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Earl of Lytton,
Viceroy of India and a popular Victorian poet. Lucile,
a romantic yet witty novel in verse, went through hundreds of editions (legitimate and
pirated) and hundreds of thousands of copies. The three editions shown here were all
published by Thomas Y. Crowell of New York within the decade of the 1880s. Each was meant
to appeal to a different level of society: (l-r)
a ladys boudoir book, and a cheap edition, a family library or parlor edition.